A new study published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise has found that brain endurance training (BET) can significantly improve cognitive and physical performance in older adults, reducing the risk of falls and accidents.
Researchers at Universities of Birmingham, UK, and Extremadura, Spain, conducted a 8-week experiment involving 24 healthy sedentary women aged between 65-78 years old. The participants were divided into three groups: BET, exercise training, and no training (control group).
The BET group completed three 45-minute sessions per week, including 20 minutes of resistance training and 25 minutes of endurance training, as well as a 20-minute cognitive task before exercising.
After the intervention, the participants underwent a series of cognitive and physical tests. The results showed that the BET group outperformed the exercise-only group in both cognitive tasks (7.8% increase) and physical performance (29.9% improvement).
The findings suggest that brain endurance training can be an effective countermeasure against mental fatigue’s negative effects on performance in older adults.
According to Professor Chris Ring, one of the authors of the study, “BET is an effective intervention to improve cognitive and physical performance in older adults, even when fatigued. This could have significant implications for improving healthspan in this population.”
Source: https://scitechdaily.com/revolutionary-training-method-boosts-brain-and-body-performance-in-older-adults